How do you do it
by meAlie
Summary: "I... how do you do it?" "What?" "Uhm... Being you..." Her eyebrows rose and a bit of her concern got shoved away by amusement "As much as I'd love to, I'm afraid I can't teach you. You'll stay yourself."


**How do you do it**

**Disclaimer**: the depressing, sleep deprived, sad and hopeless atmosphere I tried to create in this fic is MINE *muahaha*... what a great thing to own... the characters aren't mine, not making any money with them...

**A/N:** Meh... not able to write two words at the moment, just found this older piece lurking somewhere on my hard drive, reread it and deemed it publishable (you may review if you disagree), still no beta, still not a native speaker... so excuse my mistakes. Read and Review (I'm desperate for kind words at the moment (more than usually o_O)). Enough whining, on with the story, hope you like it!

~~oOo~~

"Coming!", Lisbon bellowed, blinking hard and trying to remember the faces and names of her neighbors to anticipate who could be in desperate need for her help at four in the morning. Everyone else, not living next door, had better first call her. Still, she wasn't really surprised to see Jane stand in front of her door, when looking through the peephole.

"What do you want?" she asked while opening the door.

He looked tired, kind of panicked, making her wake up more and getting a bit panicked herself.

"I... how do you do it?"

"What?" she deadpanned, knitting her brows together and looking at him questioningly.

"Uhm... Being you..."

Her eyebrows rose and a bit of her concern got shoved away by amusement "As much as I'd love to, I'm afraid I can't teach you. You'll stay yourself."

She sidestepped and opened the door a bit wider to let him in and Jane calmed down not only by her mere presence but also by the smirk he could clearly see lurking behind her grouchy facade, in her tired and concerned eyes and her grimly set mouth.

He strode by and went into her kitchen, leaving her to close the door and follow him with a sigh.

"Normally I sleep at this time of the night." she informed him tonelessly, while sitting down on one of her kitchen stools.

"I know.", he replied while setting water to boil and searching for tea.

"Oh, ok, thought maybe _that_ was the mystery to you."

"Mystery?"

"About how I do it... being me..."

He looked up at her and gave her his patronizing, false grin.

She bit her lip, keeping herself from asking the obvious "Are you Ok?", stood up from the kitchen stool and shuffled back into her living area.

"I'm not." He answered, ignoring the fact she had kept herself from asking.

She wasn't sure if he really had known the question coming to her mind or if he was answering something else and it all gave her a headache, long before they even had managed to really talk about anything.

"Sit down, Jane." She ordered, burrowing herself into her couch and throwing a blanket over her pajamas. She anticipated one of his arrogant smiles and his habit of ignoring her orders. But he dutifully left the Kettle standing beside her sink and sat down beside her.

"How do you know where I keep a kettle, Jane?"

"It surprises you since you use your coffee machine and probably weren't entirely sure yourself where the thing was." He stated chuckling.

"I'm translucent, right? So... no need to ask me, at four am, how I do anything."

"Sorry."

"It's Ok."

He turned towards her, "I needed to see you."

"Sleep."

"Huh."

"What? You can't read the unspoken sentence around the word?"

He studied her, inquiring, "Enlighten me."

"You need to sleep! You need to know how I do it. The Sleeping. After cases like those."

He gave it some thought, then nodded affirmative.

She sighed, "I guess the solutions are different ones for everyone. You wanna try a bubble bath?"

He gave her his brightest smile, combined with awfully tired eyes, shaking his head.

"Sleeping in company and on a couch is more you're style, right? ... You can try this couch." she offered.

And he let himself drop, fall to the side, placing his head on her lap, before she even ended the invitation. She looked down at him surprised.

"Thank you." he offered lightly, closing his eyes.

"You're welcome.", she said, brows knitted, torn between anger that he took the invitation this far and concern for the poor tired man. Her concern won out and she extracted her right arm from the blanket she was cocooned in to pull the blanket draped over the backrest of her couch down, covering Jane. She leant back, closing her eyes and letting her right hand come to rest on Jane's Curls. "Wipe that smirk off your face and sleep."


End file.
